A female ex-cop bagged a nearly $500,000 jury award yesterday after suing the NYPD for alleged sex harassment – just two years after one of her co-workers at the 50th Precinct landed $1.25 million in a similar suit.

“I feel vindicated, I really do,” said former city Police Officer Patricia Raniola, a 42-year-old mother of three from The Bronx.

“Right now, it [harassment] is happening to other women on the job, and maybe if enough of us keep going and don’t settle,” things will improve.

Raniola filed a $5 million lawsuit against the city in 1996, charging she had been wrongly fired.

She claimed that after spurning the advances of her boss, then-precinct Chief Anthony Kissik, and also asking to be partnered with a black officer, she was harassed – then hounded for complaining about it. She was fired in retaliation, she said.

Raniola yesterday said that once during a roll call, Kissik hissed, “If Raniola opens her mouth, I’m going to put one in her f- – – – – – head.”

“There’s not enough time left in this week to describe the torture I went through,” she said of Kissik, who kept a nameplate on his desk that read “Mad Anthony.”

The jury awarded Raniola $470,159 because she was retaliated against for complaining, but did not give her any money based on her harassment claims.

Both Kissik, who is retired, and the department have denied the charges.

They said Raniola had a history of repeatedly violating the department’s disciplinary code and procedures, including not appearing when needed in court, failing to file the proper paperwork and being late and discourteous.

The deputy chief of the city’s Labor and Employment Law Division said yesterday:

“We are pleased that the jury found that Ms. Raniola was not subjected to any discrimination, including any sexual harassment. However, we strongly disagree with the jury’s verdict in favor of Ms. Raniola on her claim of retaliation.

“. . . She was fired because she repeatedly violated the department’s rules and regulations . . . Her own misconduct, and nothing else, was the reason for her dismissal.”

Kissik was promoted to second in command of Manhattan detectives before he retired. He could not be reached for comment yesterday.

The jury ordered him to personally pay Raniola $50,000 of the award. It was unclear whether the city would pick up the tab.

Kissik had come under fire before – in the case of Raniola’s co-worker, ex-Officer Gloria Gonzalez.

Gonzalez sued the department in the mid-1990s after allegedly being sexually harassed by another officer and then reputedly hounded by Kissik to the point of leaving.

She won a $1.25 million award two years ago.

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CRIME AND PUNISHMENT

* Former cop Gloria Gonzalez (left) netted $1.25 million in October 2000 for her sexual-retaliation case against cops in the same precinct as Raniola.

* Sandra Marsh, former head of the NYPD’s Office of Equal Employment Opportunity, took home a $1 million settlement in 2000 after being forced out of her job after criticizing the handling of an NYPD sex-harassment case.

* Ex-Queens cop Sheryll Goff landed $320,000 in a settlement in 1998 after she said she was subjected to lewd comments by co-workers at the 110th Precinct in Elmhurst, and that commanders regularly watched the Playboy channel in the station house.

* Port Authority Officer Doris Caridi won $500,000 in October 1992 after she said she was discriminated against when she claimed she was fondled by a boss in the department.